Yeah! A lot of times, hanging around with people you share things in common with leads to friendships. In friendships you might discover a few more things in common. No worries … if it’s fun and the chemistry is good, the rest will follow.

I ran across the unglobed map before I found the planisphere at the online British Museum’s ‘Silk Road’ exhibition. Go there and look for the text ‘Map of the world from al-Idrisi’. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-museum-silk-roads-exhibition-1234722468/

I found the planisphere image on the Wikipedia page for ’ Tabula Rogeriana’, which shows several chunks of the map. (Idrisi maps all have ‘South’ on the top of the map.) In the ‘significance’ section, there’s a big version of the map. None of them are maps of the whole Earth … it’s said that his maps were all based on what people who’d been there told him.

Some thought that … and some didn’t. Some noticed the shape of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon was round. Some noticed that as ships sailed into the distance, they ‘sank down’ until only the sails were visible. All ‘people’ weren’t smart about it.

Anyway, putting a big map like that on a 6-foot globe, you could stand in one place, spin it, and see it all.

Related fact: the Greek astronomer Anaxagoras taught that the Earth went around the Sun … 1500 years before this map was made.

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There are multiple kinds of ‘smart’. The following section in Wiki breaks them down into IQ, emotional, social, and moral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Human

Historically, a lot of ‘high IQ’ people didn’t necessarily ‘fit in’ to society. See the story of William James Sidis … ‘He entered Harvard University at age 11 and, as an adult, was claimed by family members to have an IQ between 250 and 300’.

Also historically, people smart enough to see that a lot of the world is about shuckin’ and jivin’ and not giving a crap? may not be not interested in playing the game. Some find other interests and don’t see the point in ‘accomplishing’ things that will mostly be forgotten. Ramanujan had a HUGE talent for math ONLY, unrecognized until he wrote a professor halfway around the world.

We were all born without a manual. There are ways to enjoy life on your own terms.

There are different kinds of smart. A person can be quick and creative at something (math, mechanics, music, marketing …), and less so at everything else.

If the something is -complicated-, then a lot of learning is needed, and a good qualified teacher will help you sort out what is really important to know. Chess is complicated, and you need to learn basic strategies of how to move and not get eaten alive. There are some books that can help with that. But a human teacher can get you there a lot faster. If you’re really motivated but you’re not remembering enough? it may not be your ‘something’ !

Practically speaking, probably not.

After many years of using FFox, I just tried a Zen install on Linux. It did not turn out as well as I hoped.

I did not have FFoxesr installed in the way the OS would have installed it (though it was still in the user folder). This meant that Zen did/could not see my bookmarks, extensions or passwords … and the options it offered didn’t work out. (It wanted an HTML bookmarks file … I had them saved as JSON … and a ‘CSV’ (??) passwords file … wherever that is … and it found no extensions folder.) So, for starters, years of customizations had to be manually restored.

But, fair shake, I did manually re-install bookmarks AND a few extensions that had saved databases (e.g. UBO, NoScript, Block site). (It ignored the sub-folders in the JSON bookmarks folders, dumping all bookmarks into the top-levels.) And I had to re-create all the settings. (Most of which exist in the .mozilla folder on Linux … easy to find.)

I played for an hour with what I put there (without a menu bar … or a tab bar, all URIs are shoved together -by name- in a sidebar … I did figure out how to see a bookmark bar). I could discern no -truly useful- advantages to it. None. That was not offset by some pretty cosmetics. So even if you do get all of your customizations past the one-size-fits-all install, for long-time FF users I see no substantial advantages to the Zen browser.

No cavalry … and no calvary either … is going to ride over the hilltop and save us. We can only keep healthy, keep learning and keep doing the best we can for each other. Yeah, it matters today. And it’s always today.

GEOLOGY can be intriguing when much of it is set outdoors (in videos, no bug bites, no poison ivy) and being explained by a professor at a small college with a great love of the topic and a talent and desire to share it with a large audience. Yes, I’m talking Nick on the Rocks himself. Danger:He’s often accompanied by other interesting geologists. It might be catching.

https://www.youtube.com/@GeologyNick/videos

If you’re new to the topic or have children, then Nick also does short (under 10-minute) shows that are shown on PBS, which you’ll find here:

https://www.pbs.org/show/nick-rocks/

Oh, I’m thinking about 20 minutes in line outside a small community center, back when I lived in North Dakota (pop of whole state about 600,000). As a lifelong nomad, it was the only state I lived where I actually attended a Democratic party caucus. It was an enjoyable excursion into a behind-the-scenes election process that most will never venture into. Best part was, I escaped without being signed up for anything more!

THANKS for alerting me to another source of XKCD madness!

All pets were at one time wildlife. Killing one to save it… wow.

Some way of grouping Communities other than by name (not very useful). E.G. search on ‘Climate’ and you don’t get the name of one of the busiest communities.

In other words, group them a step up the taxonomy. Create 10 or 15 groups (sci/tech, history, music, culture, media, nature, issues, locations…), see what mods have to say about that list. (Could do worse than the Wikipedia taxonomy.)

One thing that seems to be missing from most Zen promotion is that Firefox has a huge collection of add-on options/extentions. Hard to beat of you’re reliant on several of them. Keeps me from even trying it.

Seems like a lot of people need to know that these things **can ** -bite- you. We recently went to a restaurant that used one to direct you to an online menu. We asked for on-paper menus instead… If this is going to be service industry, it better get smarter about it.

“How QR codes work and what makes them dangerous – a computer scientist explains” https://theconversation.com/how-qr-codes-work-and-what-makes-them-dangerous-a-computer-scientist-explains-177217

https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2021/qr-codes.html

It’s gross, fraudulent as three-card monte, and … as with many corporate tricksters … there needs to be a law with prison terms.

Have a look at Gorbachev. A big loss, that.

It can be hard to find the right community to post a link in. Figuring out the rules and knowing who’s reading them (and sometimes what they’re really about) might cause someone to give up. (Especially when people complain about ‘this isn’t the place for that’ without stating the better alternative.)

Bill Gates, except when Ballmer was there.